Green Ace (21 page)

“Then you hightailed it over to a branch library, and talked out loud to yourself while you dug in the old newspaper files, right?”

“That’s almost slanderous! I was only trying to find out something new about the Harrington girl’s background, her career in show business and everything. Perhaps I did exclaim a little once or twice when I ran into something that surprised me—I was concentrating so hard I forgot where I was. It could happen to anybody.”

“Nothing that happens to you could happen to
anybody
else,” Piper told her. “Then, according to the report, you went up town to a secondhand shop and prowled around the old phonograph records until you found a little number called
The Clock Store
, issued in 1911. You bought it for $4.50, started for home, and then changed your mind and took a taxi down to Tiffany’s, where you represented yourself as a customer and then tried to wreck a $30,000 string of matched emeralds.”

“I had my reasons, Oscar. ‘I am but mad north-north-west.’ But it all does sound very deadly the way you put it. Your spies don’t miss much, do they? Except perhaps what I had for lunch.”

“Chicken salad and tea,” he said. “You also made a phone call to a Lackawanna number.”

“Yes, to Natalie Rowan. I set her to calling every county clerk within two hundred miles of New York to try and find out the name of the young man Midge Harrington married four and a half years ago, so he could take his rightful place with the other suspects.” Miss Withers smiled with modest triumph. “
There’s
something you didn’t know!”

The Inspector went back to his doodling. “Relax, Hildegarde. What do you think the police are, nincompoops? We knew about the marriage the day after the girl was murdered, but it was more than three years in the past. When Midge was hardly more than fifteen she eloped with a college boy to Rock Creek, Maryland, which is a sort of Gretna Green, and went through a ceremony with both of them giving false names and ages. His family found out about it and had it annulled a few days later. Rich Philadelphia people, name of Gresham. The kid was Wilton—no, Wilmot Gresham.”

It was a body blow. “But Oscar, there was nothing about him in your file!”

“Why should there be? The boy was only a couple of years older than Midge, and there was no need to drag him and his family into a murder case. He had gone back to school at Princeton after the family made him see the error of his ways, and had kept his promise never to see the girl again. We checked back on him thoroughly without his even knowing it, and he was in his dormitory room studying the night Midge was killed.”

“Studying on a hot Friday night in August? Summer school must have changed since my day. These alibis! And did he have an alibi for the Marika murder too?”

Piper rubbed his forehead wearily. “I don’t know. You can ask him, I suppose. The fellow graduated in midterm, and now I understand he’s got some sort of office-boy job on Wall Street, so presumably he lives here in town.”

“Oh dear,” sighed Miss Withers. “You’re right, he doesn’t fit into the Marika job at all. Because he couldn’t have known about the medium, and what she told Mrs. Rowan about a message from the Beyond. And Mr. Zotos gave me such a nice ready-made motive for him, too. For killing Midge, I mean. But I suppose it does help to eliminate suspects, doesn’t it?” She stood up. “I’d better run along and start eliminating some more.”

“Wait!” the Inspector said sharply.

“Now, Oscar, you’re not going to continue this farce of holding me as a prisoner?”

“I want you to have dinner.”

“What would I have at this hour, breakfast?” Then she did a double take. “Oh, you’re not actually inviting me out? What is this, an armistice?”

It was close to unconditional surrender, as the schoolteacher discovered when they were seated at a tiny table in a backyard outdoor restaurant in the Village, staring at each other over plates of
chicken cacciatore.
“You really want to know why I assigned a man to tail you today?” Piper said. “It was because I’m desperate and just about at the end of my rope, that’s why.”

“Oscar!”

He nodded glumly. “I got to thinking about the times in the past when you played a long shot and won. If your hunch about these two murders being connected is right this time too—well, I don’t want that man’s execution on my conscience. Are you getting anywhere? Do you know anything I don’t know?”

“Why, Oscar, you want a peek at my examination paper!”

“That’s about it.” The Inspector took up a bread stick, and gnawed it as if it had been one of his favorite perfectos. “Do you know the answer?”

“I wouldn’t say that, but I’ve learned most of the questions.” She looked at his untouched plate. “Oscar, are you sick?”

“Who wouldn’t be?” He smiled a bitter smile. “Did you see the newspapers?”

Miss Withers admitted that she had been otherwise occupied, and he produced a pocketful of clippings. She read: “
1000 POLICE GET THEIR MAN
… Near death in Bellevue City Hospital today lies Rollo (Banana-Nose) Wilson, smalltime sneak-thief wounded last night in biggest police manhunt since the capture of Two-Gun Crowley. Wilson was wanted by Headquarters homicide bureau for questioning in connection with the brutal strangling of showgirl Midge Harrington thirteen months ago, for which Andrew Rowan, playboy publicist, is slated to pay the extreme penalty next week in Sing Sing’s execution chamber …” She looked up blankly. “But Oscar—?”

“I know,” he interrupted. “It’s all a fantastic mistake. But Wilson
was
shot, and we had to give the press some excuse for it. We couldn’t mention the real reason for his arrest—you proved he was innocent of the Marika murder with your act with the rubber nose last night, and besides it turned out he was pulling a robbery somewhere else at the time. But this morning I had a headache and besides I was getting a riding from the Commish, so I told Smitty to get rid of the reporters by telling them we wanted Banana-Nose in connection with some old murder case out of the files. He swears he didn’t say anything definitely about the Harrington case, but how they’d get wind of it otherwise—”

“It would be odd if they hadn’t, with Rowan making wills and changing insurance beneficiaries and all that,” she pointed out.

“Or maybe you started the rumor that the case was being reopened, running around trying to scare the suspects?” He shrugged. “Well, never mind how it happened, it’s happened. Wilson can’t live more than a few hours at the most. If Rowan is executed, and his will and the rest of it made public, don’t you see what the result is? There’ll be a great hue and cry about the police framing an innocent man and shooting down the one witness who might have saved him!”

“I see your point,” said the schoolteacher, adding sensibly, “but do stop trying to think on an empty stomach, it encourages ulcers.” She picked up the clips again. “Here’s something else!” she cried after a moment. “What’s this about a nationwide search for David Cawthorne? Wasn’t that the man Marika was sending money to?”

He nodded glumly. “Our last hope. But he’s probably changed his name. And we haven’t been able to locate a picture of him.”

Try those old copies of
Billboard
in Marika’s bookcase,” Miss Withers said softly. Or the theatrical booking agencies.”

“Huh?”

She whipped open her handbag, and produced a notebook. “Read this. It’s an extract from a review of a stage show that opened almost two years ago. Midge Harrington was in a dance act, Iris Dunn was straight woman for a comic on the same bill and that’s how the two girls met. But there was another act—”

Piper read the page of notes, and said, “So what?”

“Read it out loud, Oscar.”

“‘Cawthor the Great materializes the ghost of a mermaid named Mary …’ That’s silly, I thought mermaids weren’t supposed to have souls or anything.”

“You don’t get the point! It was only his assistant, silly. But try putting the names together. Doesn’t it occur to you that Cawthor the Great might be the stage name of David Cawthorne? And that Marika Thoren sounds very much like Mary Cawthorne? Probably his daughter. Anyway she did some magic and mediumistic stunts in the act, and later when he became ill she set up shop for herself as a medium and fortuneteller. Naturally she’d keep in touch with her acquaintances in show business and that’s how Midge Harrington became a client—and told Rowan, who said something to his wife about that wonderful little woman up on Ninety-sixth Street! See how very simple it is?”

The Inspector nodded. “Could be. There goes another suspect. After I get back to my office I’ll call off the heat on Cawthorne.”

“But why? Men have murdered their own daughters before this.”

“Maybe. But she wouldn’t have been dancing with her own father.”

“She wasn’t
dancing
with anybody. I don’t care what that man downstairs said, he’s probably stone-deaf. Marika was playing hymns as mood music for a séance.”

“Then she’d hardly be throwing a séance for the man who taught her the trade. And Cawthorne doesn’t fit the rest of it—he was just out of a hospital, and could hardly have gone leaping over those fences in Marika’s back yard.”

Miss Withers conceded that he had a point. “Those fences get in my way too,” she admitted. “But, Oscar. I wouldn’t be too hasty about calling off the dragnet. If Cawthorne could be located and brought here in time, he could be very useful to us. He knows all the tricks of the trade, and if he’d only consent to lend his talents to a little ceremony Natalie and I have in mind—”

“
No
!” Piper almost knocked over his coffee cup. “You’re not actually suggesting the corny old routine of a séance, with all the suspects present there in the room where the murder was committed, and a fake materialization of the victim that’s supposed to scare the guilty party into hysterics?”

“Why—why yes,” she admitted, with an odd look in her eye. “Something along that general line.”

“You
can’t
be serious,” the Inspector said. “That idea’s as fantastic as the old plan of making the suspects touch the dead body on the theory that its wounds would start bleeding again! Besides, nobody would come.”

“They wouldn’t dare stay away! And, of course, you could
make
them come …”

He sighed. “Police powers are limited by law. If I had them dragged there I’d lose my badge.”

“Not if you found the murderer. And if you don’t you’ll probably lose it anyway. Osear, I have a double-barrelled hunch that I—that we can solve both these murders if we can only get the suspects all together in a dark room, on any pretext at all.”

“You and your hunches—” he began, and stopped. She smiled at him sweetly. “I have another one—a hunch that as soon as you finish your coffee you’re going to get the Governor on the telephone and ask for a reprieve for Andy Rowan!”

“Wrong as usual.”

“Oh, Oscar! I thought you’d come holding out the olive branch of peace. Please listen to me. Will you call?”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“If you must know, because I already tried it this afternoon, and got turned down! The Governor wasn’t in too receptive a mood, it seems that some representative of an insurance company tried to work on him along the same lines earlier today. When it comes to that sort of pressure, little Mr. Big is as independent as a hog on ice. He said no reprieve, no stay of execution even, unless I gave him my word that there was some important new evidence, which there isn’t.”

“It depends,” said the schoolteacher thoughtfully. Then she added, “But you did
try
! Oscar, you’re beginning to see the light!”

“I am not!” he snapped, and then corrected, “I mean I still think that Rowan is guilty. But as I said before, I hate to see a weak link in the chain of evidence. I want to play safe.”

“Thanks very much for dinner,” said the schoolteacher thoughtfully. “I’m afraid I must be running along. I half-promised to see Natalie Rowan tonight, and she’ll be frantic—”

“She’s not the only one,” cried Oscar Piper. “I don’t know what got into you. You’re usually thrusting unwanted advice on everybody—haven’t you anything to suggest now?”

“You could, of course, back up and start all over again, with an open mind. Try believing Rowan’s amended story of what happened that night, just as an exercise of your intelligence, and see where that gets you.”

The Inspector obviously found that a hard lump to swallow. “Then your only theory is still that Midge Harrington was shaking down Rowan, only she got cold feet and called in some old friend, maybe a former lover, to go along for protection? But her protector had been nursing a grudge for years, and the minute they got inside the empty house strangled the girl, then waited around to knock out Andy and take the money out of his pocket?” Piper shook his head.

“Can you think of a better theory, Oscar?” Miss Withers gathered up her gloves, and adjusted her hat so that it canted improbably to starboard.

“And you insist that the same person killed Midge and Marika too? Then from what you’ve told me you’ve already eliminated all your suspects! Not just the suspects—everybody in the case!”

“Have I, Oscar?” She gave him an odd look. “How?”

The Inspector was very serious. “Okay, take the men. We’ve just talked about Cawthorne, and Banana-Nose Wilson, and Gresham. All out, for various good reasons. Sprott and Bruner are your pet suspects. They may both be short on alibis, but neither of them got that $5000—the musician couldn’t pay his back union dues for months after the murder, and Bruner got kicked out of his Brooklyn studios for nonpayment of rent. Even Zotos, from what you admit about him, doesn’t seem the type to be able to fight his way out of a wet paper sack. If he couldn’t walk around the block with you and your dog without gasping for breath, then he certainly didn’t bash out Marika’s brains and then leap down the back stairs and vault over those fences …”

“You have a point,” admitted the schoolteacher. “But—”

“Suppose we pursue your argument to the ridiculous,” Piper continued. “Take the women, though I for one don’t believe that the girl would have turned to her roommate or any other female at a time like that. Iris Dunn might have been able to climb fences—but where was her motive? Virla Bruner, the ex-wife, had already had her full measure of revenge when she wrote the letter that queered Midge’s chances of being Miss America. Natalie Rowan would stop at nothing to save her husband—but she’d have stuck on top of the first fence. Chloris likewise. So you see?”